Decades after his heyday, an aging Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) is now the chief of CONTROL, while his bumbling son Zach (Andy Dick) has taken over as an agent.

CRITIQUE

Three decades after the original Get Smart debuted, there was an attempt to redo it for a new generation, with Don Adams back as Maxwell Smart (now basically just a supporting character, as the new CONTROL chief), Barbara Feldon’s Agent 99 now a Congresswoman (and also now a minor character) and the series now focusing on their son Zach.

Unfortunately, the result (which was cancelled fairly quickly) is really just woefully bad.  Most of the blame can be put firmly on the writing; the jokes here miss much more than they hit, while there isn’t enough solid plot in any of the seven half-hour episodes the series lasted to compensate for this.

Andy Dick also isn’t nearly a funny enough comic actor to elevate the material.  He has been partnered with Elaine Hendrix, playing Agent 66, but she’s not very good either.  The plots are a very mixed bag of evil deeds that must be foiled, somehow all involving KAOS, but many of these don’t even make much sense.

The series endlessly tries to mine the original series for humor, such as bringing back the idea of master-in-disguise Agent Zero, who can pop up as anyone.  Bernie Kopell even appears in one episode, revisiting his role of Max’s KAOS rival Siegfried. 

But Adams and Feldon only get a few scenes each episode, and though occasionally they show a little spark, they can’t make much of the material earlier.  This collection is obviously being released to leech onto the hype surrounding the new Get Smart movie, but anyone with fond memories of the original series should avoid this memory-tainting mess.

THE VIDEO

The picture quality here is okay, but not great.

THE AUDIO

Get Smart is presented in English, Spanish or Portuguese.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are French, Portuguese and Spanish subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

The only extras are “minisodes” of old TV shows, one a 5-minute version of a Newsradio episode, the other a 5-minute version of a TJ Hooker episode.  They are promoting a website that apparently offers a lot of truncated TV series like this, though the result largely feels rushed and pointless.

FINAL THOUGHTS